Under-18s held at Guantánamo, says UK lawyer

GuardianVikram DoddJune 14, 2005

Five
men who were juveniles when captured by US forces were held at
Guantánamo Bay while they were under 18, despite statements by the
Pentagon to the contrary, a lawyer who visited the prison has claimed.

The
US military has admitted in the past to holding three Afghan juveniles
in a special camp called Iguana, but said it had released them.

In
a January 2004 BBC interview a Pentagon spokesperson said no juveniles
were held at Guantánamo, where over 500 Muslim men are detained without
charge or trial in conditions that have provoked worldwide concern.

But
British lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith, who returned from visiting clients
in Guantánamo last week, claims that at least five people held there
were taken to the camp after being arrested, despite being under 18 at
the time.

One youth, 14 when detained in October 2001 in Pakistan, is still in US custody three-and-a-half years later.

The
youth, known as Muhammad, a Saudi originally from Chad, alleges being
subjected to torture, including being suspended by his wrists and burnt
with cigarettes.

Mr
Stafford-Smith said: "The treatment of adults in Guantánamo Bay is
shocking enough. To see a juvenile being held in the worst camp, Camp
Five, numbs me.

"He is held in solitary, allowed one hour of recreation a week, and he is not allowed any education or books of any sort.

"He
has scars on his arm, he says caused by interrogators burning him with
a cigarette, and prisoners are not allowed cigarettes. They have been
abusing him on a daily basis.

"International law is clear that you have to treat juveniles differently."

The
debate about the future of the camp has intensified in recent weeks
amid reports that the Bush administration may be considering closing
it.

In an
interview shown on Fox News last night, the vice president, Dick
Cheney, defended the camp. "The important thing here to understand is
that the people that are at Guantánamo are bad people.

"I
mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that
were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part
of the al-Qaida network."

According
to papers just declassified by the US military, Muhammad was suspected
at one stage of being the brother of former British detainee Feroz
Abassi. According to Mr Stafford-Smith, "the passing resemblance is
limited solely to the fact that they are both African".

The US military was unable to comment.

This
week a key senate committee will begin hearings on Guantánamo, amid
concern voiced by senators, including one Republican, that the
persistent allegations of ill-treatment there are damaging the US's
image abroad. Amnesty International branded Guantánamo the "gulag" of
our time in its latest annual report, a claim Mr Bush angrily denied.